Tsuge Ikebana: Smooth Bent Dublin (Fukuda) (S) (155) (2021) Tobacco Pipe

The three artisans who staff Tsuge's Ikebana workshop are the best carvers the brand employs, leveraging their considerable skill to create sophisticated works that often draw from the Danish style of pipe design. Kazuhiro Fukuda, who made this bent Dublin, was actually sent to Denmark by Tsuge in the 1970s to learn directly from master artisan Sixten Ivarsson, an experience that would come to inform the next half-century of his career. Fukuda's work displays an overtly Danish style, with a focus on soft lines and rich curvature, both of which are seen throughout this pipe's outline. Despite the supple contours of the shape, this piece also showcases Fukuda's penchant for crafting pipes of a remarkable heartiness, offering an imposing presence in hand and a well-developed thickness through the stummel.

An Acorn-like take on the bent Dublin, this pipe features a uniquely shaped bowl that stands on a sweeping heel rather than the former profile's more oft-seen heel spur, this heel supporting the bowl as it flares expressively to the rim. These walls are extremely stout, concealing a fairly shallow, but broad, chamber and canting forward dynamically. This forward cant draws the eye toward the fore and focuses attention on the rim, where the walls terminate in a rotund, asymmetrical dome, rising higher at the fore and aft than the flanks to create a gently flowing silhouette at the focal point of the composition's visual weight. A wide transition out back leaves plenty of space to drape a digit, and it gives way to an impressively broad, oval shank that flares out and curls subtly as it terminates in a subdued dome at the face. A short saddle stem of black vulcanite pairs to the stummel at this face, and it's been crafted with a firm expansion ring at the base, creating an area of negative space near the junction, which works with the thick shank to aptly balance this pipe's visual weight. Many of the Ikebana workshop's pipes are graded alphabetically, with letters closer to "Z" denoting a higher grade of pipe. This particular piece is graded "S" and is one of scant few Ikebana pipes to achieve such a feat, its warm, rich stain unveiling a dense pattern of flame and straight grain through the circumference of the bowl and flanks of the shank, while the top of the shank, rim, and underside display veritable oceans of birdseye.